


You All Look The Same From Far Away

by th_esaurus



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Tentacle Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 12:51:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos reached out and held Cecil's palm between his thumb and two fingers, to see if it was real.</p><p>"I'm touching you to make sure you exist," he explained.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You All Look The Same From Far Away

Warm sunsets in Night Vale made Carlos tired and uncertain. He had—certain anchors, but in general, Night Vale was a perpetually impending storm.

 

He had rolled up his jeans untidily to just above the ankle, and his shirtsleeves were short, and all the windows were closed because last time he'd opened them against the heat, thin and curling vapours had stolen all his test tubes, giggling glassily as they went.

 

He had more test tubes on order from Desert Bluffs. The mailing service between Desert Bluffs and Night Vale was temporally sketchy.

 

Carlos rubbed at his arms, at the hair there, and turned on the radio, and heard Cecil's voice, and turned it off again. Cecil was coming over after his show. He did that now, on occasion, when Carlos' particular experiments had come to an end, or he'd reached a cul-de-sac in his investigations, or the moon was three-quarters full and it was three-quarters of a bad decision to venture outside at night. Sometimes Cecil came over to be helpful, to hold beakers, or take notes, or develop photos in Carlos' bathtub with him; but Carlos had specified that tonight he would like Cecil to come over for personal reasons.

 

It was always an important distinction. It was good to hold onto order and control in Night Vale. Destiny and Fate turned blind eyes to the little desert town. 

 

When Carlos turned on the radio again, it gifted him with the sound of three foxes mauling an albino rabbit. The radio told him telepathically that the rabbit was albino, though not blind. Carlos, grimly, did not feel this brought the odds into its favour.

 

The doorbell rang, and shorted out all the electricity in Carlos' lab. The radio whined pitifully into silence, and the setting sun dipped helpfully lower to glint under the perpetual two-inch gap at the bottom of Carlos' blinds. It was enough light to navigate by, enough to pass for romantic, and he would find the fusebox later. An adventure. An adventure he could have with Cecil.

 

He was sure he hadn't been smiling a minute ago, but Cecil echoed his sudden beaming when he cracked open the door. "Hi," Carlos said.

 

"Hello," Cecil replied.

 

This was how a great majority of their conversations began.

 

Cecil was wearing mustard-coloured short trousers with a blazer that matched, and a tie that did not, and a shirt that Carlos didn't manage to figure out the hue of over the course of the evening. He was standing very upright, as though he considered himself dolled up. And he was smiling at Carlos' smile. He bore it like a gift, instead of flowers.

 

About a week ago, they had sat together in the Municipal park, with a picnic hamper full of empty clocks and various copper parts, and had tried to build a timepiece that worked. Carlos had two technical manuals and a copy of Stephen Hawking, just in case, that he had ordered from Amazon, though Cecil told him there were copies in the library - _theoretically_ \- that one could check out - _hypothetically_.

 

Carlos did not regret his purchases.

 

He had been very attracted to Cecil right then, watching him work with his hands. He couldn't imagine Cecil tinkering under the hood of a car, or making home improvements, or weeding in a garden that had no right to flourish in the hardy desert. He was almost wholly made of voice and vision. Carlos had reached out and held Cecil's palm between his thumb and two fingers, to see if it was real.

 

"I'm touching you to make sure you exist," he explained.

 

"That's very—scientific of you," Cecil had replied, smiling, and then swallowing his smile.

 

He touched Cecil's wrist now, standing at the door. He was very slowly making his way across Cecil's whole body, to check that every part of him was corporeal. Just one inch of skin at a time. He had to be methodical about it. Especially in Night Vale.

 

"Let's, uh—can I get you some water?" Carlos asked, letting Cecil in.

 

"Your water's running? On a Thursday?"

 

Carlos checked: turned on the faucet, and watched a bubbling, pock-marked black gunk ooze odiously into his kitchen sink. He turned it off.

 

"I've got—wine?" he said.

 

"Wine would be magnificent."

 

So they drank wine from mugs, because Carlos was using all his tall glasses in lieu of test tubes, and went upstairs to sit on the sofa across from the dead television, and admired how long the sun was holding its poise, scattering soft shapes in purple and red along the floor like ballroom dancers.

 

Cecil's blazer looked like it was made of horsehair. Carlos wanted to check his forearm was real, but the horsehair blazer was in the way.

 

He would have to place order carefully to one side, and do this illogically.

 

"I'm—" Carlos said, but he had always been better at speaking in auditoriums than living rooms, so he clenched his jaw and dipped forward, and kissed Cecil, almost apologetically, on his pale lips.

 

"Yes," Cecil breathed out, and he might have been trembling. "So am I."

 

It was easier after that and the wine. They went to the bedroom, and the sun chased them around to watch, stumbling a foot or two further down the horizon in its haste. It was easier to lie and talk and kiss between talking. Cecil told Carlos about their never-ending hunt at the station for new interns, and how the kittens were doing, and a chain-letter email he had been forwarded by the Angels claiming terrible events would befall his loved ones if he did not send it on immediately to twenty five unique individuals. Carlos explained his theory that the Night Vale sewer system could turn blood into water.

 

Cecil shivered when they kissed, violently when Carlos helped him off with his horsehair blazer. His shirt might have been puce, or maybe vermillion. Carlos tugged it up, and mouthed just below Cecil's navel, and tried to still his earthquaking body.

 

"Is that too much?" he asked.

 

"It's exactly the right amount," Cecil told him, a little desperately. He puts his hands, hands that he definitely had, on Carlos' jaw, stroked it reverently, and pulled him up for open-mouthed kisses, wet and warm and wonderful. Cecil's lips were real, and his tongue too, and the roof of his mouth, and the backs of his top row of teeth. He had one hand still on Carlos' jaw, and another stroking along his taut neck, and a third in the small of his back, and a fourth tickling at the soft parts behind his knees.

 

The two extra hands were, more accurately, appendages, and there were maybe six of them in total. Cecil, as well, was hard. It made him look flushed and pretty. Flushed and pretty and many-limbed. He didn't seem unnerved by this turn of events.

 

"O-oh," Carlos said.

 

He eased off for a while, gave Cecil a chance to calm down, but didn't move to disentangle himself. It was not unlike sitting beneath a willow tree in a warm breeze. Or, it was very much unlike that indeed, but Carlos needed a simile he could hold onto right now.

 

He breathed in Night Vale air, and lay on Night Vale sheets, and put his head on the chest of the Voice of Night Vale.

 

"I don't think I've ever not been in love with you," Cecil said, very quietly.

 

"That's a nice thing to say," Carlos replied. He kissed the nearest limb he could reach; wondered what would happen if he sucked on it a little, noted the shuddering reaction to theorize about later. Wrapped his fist around it and sucked on the tip.

 

"Oh, you're—" Cecil breathed, " _Oh._ "

 

"Will it make you come, if I keep going?" Carlos asked him, blushing darkly.

 

"Of—of course it will."

 

Carlos fitted himself better between Cecil's thighs, and let Cecil wrap a warm-blooded tendril around each of his bare ankles, wending up just beneath the hem of his jeans, and brought him off like that. Brought him off in the comforting knowledge that every part of Cecil was really real, even the parts he hadn't known could be real before.

 

The sun finally set, and, magnanimously, left them to it.


End file.
